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Dopamine Fracking

igerman.cc

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Re: Dopamine Fracking

#221

Post by wincy »

diydsp wrote: post #204
plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a whole strand of German and French cultural pessimism that foresaw the convergence of mass media to the current point to some degree. > Staying with the articles example, by adding artificial strawberries flavour to everything those that could have enjoyed the natural experience never get the opportunity to do so, preventing them from acquiring the taste. I would go so far to say, that even if people tasted…

>French cultural pessimism Specifically Jean Baudrillard describes copies of copies with decreasing relavence and quality. But more sinisterly, the loss of knowing what is real, important, safe, efficacious. His work builds extensively on Plato, Lucretius, and Deleuze's concept of the Simulacrum.

This is like how 95% of SUVs are basically just minivans with a slightly different body. You have to research to find one with a truck engine that can say, haul a travel trailer. Another one that comes to mind is shutters on windows. People like the look but they’re just planks of wood in the vast majority of cases now.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#222

Post by api »

pluralmonad wrote: post #214
api wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t mean to come off as criticizing you, just providing a balancing counterpoint on some of the ideas. The question is: can you give billions of people the “authentic” version? In some cases you can. In the US at least there’s boutique groceries and farmers markets that sell more authentic organic food that usually does have better nutritional value. But it costs more. The artificial mass market imitation is che…

This is exactly what the article touches on, the race to the bottom. It drags everyone's experience down. This appeal to scalability is part of the problem, IMO. Not every experience is or should be scalable. Some kids find blackberry bushes at grandma's instead of strawberries. Little is gained by strip mining human experience so the thinnest veneer can be "scaled".

That means most people can never have it, which is why romanticism ends up pining for aristocracy.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#223

Post by stymaar »

thyselius wrote: post #186
stymaar wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost 100 years ago he foresaw how the cultural offerings of society get commodified and chopped into bite sized chunks for each individual to receive theirs. He did not forsee us taking it this far, nor the addictive nature of the consumption though. Ray Bradbury did anticipate all of that in Farenheit 451, including the addictive nature of it. I read Farenheit 451 in 2010, and I was shocked to see that he had an…

In The book, what happens after?

Books are forbidden, book readers are prosecuted and their collection is burned down by “firefighters”.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#224

Post by JohnBooty »

raincole wrote: post #49

> The Strawberry Example Is this really the best example the author could come up with? If you want fresh strawberries, you can just go to a supermarket and buy them. In many places you can get a few pounds per for less than the money you earn in one hour . It's pretty much a heaven compared to pre-industrial days. But I guess the analogy of fracking is pretty spot on, just in a way the author didn't realize -- the c…

I have a friend who works in the flavor and fragrance industry and one of the things strawberry fragrance is used for is… (drum roll) actual strawberries.

Yep, a light spritz of strawberry scent on actual fucking strawberries apparently makes them more appealing.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#225

Post by subscribed »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #203
fireflash38 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maple syrup is a big one. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to even fancy breakfast restaurants and had real maple syrup. Cracker barrel used to, decades ago now. It's all garbage corn syrup now. I'd rather not have syrup at all than that cloying, thick, gross stuff.

A Canadian friend brought me back 2 bottles of local maple syrup as a gift. Ok, I'm a pretentious Frenchman when it comes to food and I do think most North Americans have no idea how real food tastes. But that stuff, I didn't know how it really tasted before trying the OG thing. Globalisation gave us the illusion of experiencing the world.

I think it's worse than that. It promotes race to the bottom.

I love strawberries, blueberries (bilberry variety) and tomatoes, but apart of the few times in the year when I can collect my own or visit a PYO farm I'm not eating them at all.

Every shop (small and huge alike) only sells the fake, hyper-accelerated garbage (sorry Spain and Morocco, but that stuff is just gross), or - in season - locally grown similarly tasteless but raised on BPA, PFAS, dioxins, flame retardants, etc[1]

I can't even buy the quality stuff. It's just not being sold, because people only buy and eat trash :(

[1] not exaggeration - fuck British farmers knowingly pouring poison on their fields and the corrupt UK governments[2] for openly permitting it, may they get impacted by it: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/16/uk-farml...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3e5y85p488o

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#226

Post by john-h-k »

raincole wrote: post #49

> The Strawberry Example Is this really the best example the author could come up with? If you want fresh strawberries, you can just go to a supermarket and buy them. In many places you can get a few pounds per for less than the money you earn in one hour . It's pretty much a heaven compared to pre-industrial days. But I guess the analogy of fracking is pretty spot on, just in a way the author didn't realize -- the c…

Yeah it’s a weird example. Perfectly possible real strawberries with all their complexity extract more dopamine!

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#227

Post by ajmurmann »

bregma wrote: post #171
Xmd5a wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The original sauce is very cumbersome to make and almost no one makes it fresh. No it's not.

It's not at all difficult if you have gained the basic survival skill of cooking. I mean, take a couple egg yolks in a double boiler, add the juice of a lemon, whisk until it's thick then add butter. 10 minutes and you can use a bowl over the pot of boiling water you're poaching your eggs in if you don't have a double boiler for your camp stove in the wilderness. But that's still more of a hassle than putting the car…

And that's ten minutes every time someone orders a dish with hollandaise because it really breaks when reheating as well. Given how much cost of labor is a factor it's easy to see why hardly any restaurant will serve real hollandaise. Perfect Baumol cost disease example. Maybe something like a Thermomix could solve the economic problem of hollandaise.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#228

Post by JohnBooty »

chownie wrote: post #216
almogo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the corporate berries are really so bad, the invisible hand will push the company in the direction of society's aggregate wallet vote. Sounds like most people are fine with them. Outside of truly autocratic systems, sounds like these berries are WAI.

Other possibilities: * The people are not fine with bad strawberries but have no other choices available * The people are not fine with bad strawberries but can't afford better choices * The people are not fine with bad strawberries but they don't know good strawberries * The people are not fine with bad strawberries but they're cheap enough to ship and sell that there's no economic case for good strawberries, so no…

    The people are not fine with bad strawberries but they don't know good strawberries
You most definitely get this phenomenon with tomatoes. There’s little demand for actually good tomatoes, because most people don’t even know what a good tomato tastes like at this point.

This applies to countless things, but tomatoes are a prime example because they deteriorate so quickly once picked relative to other fruits I guess. So they have completely bred the flavor out of them in a quest to achieve something that looks good on a supermarket shelf.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#229

Post by numbsafari »

wincy wrote: post #221
diydsp wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>French cultural pessimism Specifically Jean Baudrillard describes copies of copies with decreasing relavence and quality. But more sinisterly, the loss of knowing what is real, important, safe, efficacious. His work builds extensively on Plato, Lucretius, and Deleuze's concept of the Simulacrum.

This is like how 95% of SUVs are basically just minivans with a slightly different body. You have to research to find one with a truck engine that can say, haul a travel trailer. Another one that comes to mind is shutters on windows. People like the look but they’re just planks of wood in the vast majority of cases now.

.. and here I am wanting better minivan options that can pull a travel trailer.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#230

Post by shellkr »

killerstorm wrote: post #152

I'm not sure these things are about "big hit of dopamine". It's more about keeping user's attention on screen. And e.g. tiktok repeatedly shows minimally interesting videos, keeping viewer in expectation: how does this video end? would next the next video show? So it's not about intensity, but quantity and repeatability. MrBeast videos consists of many short segments each one having some small intrigue and/or deliver…

Yes! Exactly this... Attention... We become so dependent on always being distracted so that we can not function without it. I remember there where a similar discussion about TV back in the days.. but the level it is on now is unprecedented. I think society will adjust to this behavior as it has always done before. How damning or not is yet to be decided. It does not necessarily has to be a bad thing... but being dependent on something usually is.
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